A Short Walk Through a Wide World

The novel highlights many locations that Aubry visits, including several in the colonized spaces of Asia and Africa where European imperial powers have asserted their dominance. Though the novel does not explicitly address the issue of European colonialism, this geopolitical context is vital to the narrative.

For instance, the novel opens in Siam, now Thailand. Though Siam/Thailand is the only Southeast Asian country never to be colonized by a European power (due to several treaties with France and England), the neighboring countries of Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Malaysia were colonized as part of either French Indochina or the British Raj (Frederick, William H. “History of Southeast Asia: Patterns of a Colonial Age.” Britannica, 2018). The French and British (and, to a lesser extent, the Spanish and Dutch) seized control of Southeast Asia and divided it amongst themselves with the justification of Western superiority from 1850 through the 1920s. Aubry therefore fully expects to be understood by either a local or a French/British transplant like herself as she travels through many areas of Asia.

As a white European from an upper-middle-class background, Aubry never questions her (or any European’s) right to be there.